Phoenix businessman William Levine’s company Pacific Proving LLC bought 1,800 acres from GM in 2004, two years before Scottsdale-based DMB Proving Grounds bought the upper portion.
As DMB’s acreage saw the Eastmark developments spring up, and big industrial campuses attract the likes of Apple and Facebook, the land owned by Pacific Proving south of SR 24 remained vacant.
In satellite views of the land, between Pecos Road and the new Bell Bank Park sports complex, vehicle trackways are still visible.
Given the intensity of industrial warehouse activity in southeast Mesa, it may not be surprising that this strip of land appears destined to be a row of mega warehouses.
In late April, Pacific Proving LLC sold a large tract of this land to Phoenix-based Mesa BA Land LLC, and shortly thereafter, on May 10, the Mesa Design Review Board looked at plans for two industrial parks totaling 1,268,000 square feet spread across four buildings.
On May 25, the Mesa Planning and Zoning board approved a zoning case for the 644,000 square foot Legacy Industrial Park.
According to the project narrative the industrial park “will be capable of supporting a variety of light industrial and employment-type uses, such as manufacturing and processing, wholesaling, research, warehousing, e-commerce, data centers and distribution activities.”
It will have 108 loading docks.
If built, the Legacy Industrial Park and Legacy Business Park would join another large industrial project in the works for this strip of land. In December of 2021, Mesa City Council approved Amazon’s Project Cork, a 700,000 square foot industrial building on 71 acres to the east of the Legacy projects.